Winston Churchill Biography and List of Works

Statesman, historian, and biographer, whose five years of war leadership (1940-45) secured him a central place in modern British history. Churchill is widely considered the greatest political figure in 20th-century Britain. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. It was an open secret that he would have preferred the Nobel Peace Prize. Churchill's career was anything but predictable: he supported the Zionist movement in Palestine (1921-22), during the Abdication crisis (1926) he was loyal to Edward VIII, and during the 1945 election campaign he tried to brand Labour as a totalitarian party.

'Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, the whole world, including the Unites States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, "This was their finest hour."'
(Churchill in his speech on June 18, 1940)

Winston Churchill was the son of conservative politician Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife, Jennie Jerome, and a direct descendant from the first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722). He attended Harrow and Sandhurst, from which he graduated twentieth in a class of 130. Shortly after his father's death in 1895, he was commissioned in the Fourth Hussars. He soon obtained leave, and worked during the Cuban war as a reporter for the London Daily Graphic.

From 1896 to 1897 Churchill served as a soldier and journalist in India, and wrote the basis for THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE (1898).

"It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic."
(from The Malakand Field Force)

In 1898 Churchill fought at the battle of Omdurman in Sudan, depicting his experiences in THE RIVER WAR, AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECONQUEST OF THE SUDAN (1899). Churchill's several books dealing with his early career include MY AFRICAN JOURNEY (1908) and MY EARLY LIFE (1930). Churchill resigned his commission in 1899, and was assigned to cover the Boer War for the London Morning Post. His adventures, capture by the Boers, and a daring escape, made Churchill a celebrity and hero on his return to England in 1900.

In 1900 Churchill was first elected to Parliament. He switched from the Conservatives to the Liberal Party in 1904. In 1908 he married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, with whom he had one son and three daughters. This relationship brought much happiness and security throughout Churchill's lifetime. Between 1906 and 1911 Churchill served in various governmental posts, and was appointed lord of the admiralty in 1911. As home secretary (1910-11) he used troops against strikers in South Wales.

After the outbreak of the First World War he supported the Dardannelles Campaign, an operation against the Turks. He had encouraged the development of such equipment as the tank, and was generally credited with the British Fleet's preparedness in August 1914. But abortive expeditions to Antwerp and Gallipoli, and the failed action at the Dardanelles did great harm to Chrichill's reputation and career. Reduced in 1915 to minor office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he resigned. Churchill rejoined the Army, and rose to the rank of colonel. In 1917 he was appointed Lloyd George's minister of munition, subsequently becoming the state secretary for War and Air (1918-21), and colonial secretary (1921-22). During the postwar years he was active in support of the Whites (anti-Bolsheviks) in Russia.

At the election of 1922 Churchill was defeated as an Anti-Socialist. A rabid anti-Bolshevik, he further alienated critics by a third abortive military expedition - to help the White Russians on the Murman Coast. He left Parliament in 1922, and returned to the House as a Conservative. From this period he is remembered for his role as chancellor of the exchequer, (1924-29), for the part he played in defeating the General strike of 1926 as an opponent of organized labour, when the latter came into direct conflict with the principle of public order and government.

Out of office, Churchill began writing THE WORLD CRISIS, which appeared in 6 volumes (1923-31). The work was attacked by the eminent poet and critic Herbert Read in English Prose Style (1928). He described Chrchill's prose as high-sounding, redundant, falsely eloquent and declamatory, sharing his view with the younger post-war generation of writers who praised the virtues of simplicity. In 1924 Churchill was elected to Parliament, and appointed chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill's defence of the gold standard earned him the wrath of the economist John Maynard Keynes, who saw such policy as the cause of deflation, unemployment, and even the general strike of 1926.

After the Conservative defeat in 1929, Churchill was again out of office. His absence from government lasted a decade. During this time he wrote a four-volume biography of his ancestor, MARLBOROUGH: HIS LIFE AND TIMES (1933-1938).

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
(from a radio broadcast, October 1, 1939)

With the outbreak of World War II Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty. On May 10, 1940, he became Prime Minister, and established close ties with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Yalta meeting with Roosevelt and Stalin resulted in the dissection of Europe into opposing political jurisdictions. His strategic misjudgement was blamed for the wartime success of Germany in Africa, Norway, and the Aegean. On 8 May Churchill announced the unconditional surrender of Germany. His Conservative party was defeated by the Labour party in the 1945 election, but he continued as Opposition leader in the House of Commons: against Indian independence, and in favour of the United Nations, a unified Europe, and manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.

Churchill emerged from WW II as a national hero, but was out of office for several years. However, he led the Conservative opposition, and remained active as a political thinker. His history THE SECOND WORLD WAR appeared in six volumes (1948-54). The work was received with mixed criticism; praised for its grandeur, but Volume 2 (the period through 1941) was considered poorly arranged, and Volume 5 (through 1944) seemed to most critics a falling-off from earlier volumes.

"The quality of Churchill's volumes on the Second World War is that of his whole life. His world is built upon the primacy of public over private relationships, upon the supreme value of action, of the battle between simple good and simple evil, between life and death; but, above all, battle."
(Isaiah Berlin in The Proper Study of Mankind, 1998)

In 1951 Churchill became prime minister, and was knighted in 1953. Next year he was acclaimed by the Queen and Parliament as 'the greatest living Briton'. Churchill's efforts to bring an end to the first phase of the Cold War by a summit conference between himself, Eisenhower and Stalin (1952-55) turned out to be fruitless. He resigned from the prime minister's office in 1955 and was succeeded by Anthony Eden. He had suffered a paralytic stroke a few years before. After his retirement he published the monumental A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE (1956-58), which concentrates on politics and war. At Westerham, Kent, Churchill concentrated on painting, masonry, and horse racing.

Churchill died on January 24, 1965, after suffering cerebral thrombosis. Later historians have been critical of Churchill's actions and relationships with world leaders, and the opening of British government files in the 1980s have brought new material to light. The conviction that Churchill was among the most important men in modern history has remained unchanged.

For further reading: Winston Churchill as I Knew Him by V. Bonham-Carter (1965); Winston Spencer Churchill by R.S. Churchill and M. Gilbert (1966-, 5 vol. biography and companion volumes); Churchill by M. Gilbert (1967); Winston Churchill by M.Pelling (1974); Churchill: A Photographic Portrait by Martin Gilbert (1988); The Last Lion by William Manchester (1983-84); Winston Churchill: A Reference Guide by E. Steinbaugh (1985); Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert (1973-88); Churchill: The End of Glory: A Political Biography by John Charmley (1993); Churchill and Roosevelt at War by Keith Sainsbury (1994); Churchill: The Unruly Giant by Norman Rose (1995); In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey by Martin Gilbert (1995); Churchill and Hitler: In Victory and Defeat by John Strawson (1998); Churchill and the Soviet Union by David Carlton (2000); Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive by Celia Sandys (2000) - Phrases and slogans made well-known by Churchill: "I have nothing to offer but blood, tears, and sweat" (May 13, 1940) - "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." (August 20, 1940) - "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent". (Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, U.S., on March 5, 1946). - About the Nobel Prize for Literature: "He got the Nobel Prize for those passionate utterances which were the very stuff of human courage and defiance." Remark of William Golding from Nobel Prize Winners, ed. by Tyler Wasson (1987). - Painting, fiction: Churchill was also a talented amateur painter. Among his publications is a beautifully written introduction to the art of painting: PAINTING AS A PASTIME, 1948. His only work of fiction was SAVROLA, A TALE OF THE REVOLUTION IN LAURANIA, which appeared in 1900.

THE STORY OF MALAKAND FIELD FORCE, (1898)